The Young Law Course

Another Young Law course starts this week and I’m looking forward to teaching it again. The course lasts for three weeks and is designed for law students of recently qualified lawyers who don’t have much legal work experience.

The course focuses on civil law although there is a little input on criminal law in the first week mainly to establish some differences. Topics covered in the first week include company law, insolvency and receivership, easification, the work of barristers and solicitors, as well as some civil law case studies. The second week includes the topics of contracts and contract drafting, the civil procedure, boilerplate clauses.

In the final week course participants look at EU law, competition law, intellectual property, negligence, finance and tax, property law and alternative dispute resolution.

While looking at these topics students receive input on and practice in discussion, negotiation, telephoning, emailing and letter writing as well as contract drafting. The course is very intensive in terms of vocabulary but most course participants leave feeling they have learned a lot about how to deal with the law in English.

In addition to the core topics, the course participants attend workshops by legal professionals. These workshops take place in each week of the three-week course and provide course participants extensive practice in listening to native speakers and discussion of relevant legal topics.

We also have the opportunity to visit legal London and a trip is arranged each week to different courts. In the first week we visit a Crown Court and are able to enter a courtroom and watch a case in progress. In the second week we visit The Royal Courts of Justice and in the final week we visit either parliament or the new UK Supreme Court. These visits are always interesting and give course participants a feel of what it is like to be in a British courtroom and a greater insight as to how courts operate in practice.

By Ben

Glossary

• input - (n.) information that a group receives on a course
• intensive - (adj.) trying to do a lot in a short time
• extensive - (adj.) covering a wide range of details and ideas
• in progress - (prep phr.) describes something that is happening
• insight - (n.) deep understanding of a situation or problem
• rewarding - (adj.) giving satisfaction or bringing benefits

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